Under the Same Sun

Sharon Robinson invites us to travel with her to Tanzania in her book Under the Same Sun published by Scholastic Press. This lushly illustrated book is based on a family trip that Robinson and her mother took to Africa to visit her brother and his family and to celebrate her mother’s 85th birthday. Robinson is the daughter of the famous baseball superstar Jackie Robinson, and while she and her brother grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut, her brother moved to Tanzania in 1984.

The most beautiful portion of this book takes place in the first half when the family in Tanzania gets the home ready for their guests, when they wander through the marketplace, and then when the go on a safari through Sarengeti National Park. The illustrartions of the animals, by AG Ford, were absolutely stunning.

Robinson also intersperses Swahili throughout the book, especially by naming each animal in Swahili. There is a glossary and map in the back of the book to help kids be able to pronounce the words correctly and to get a better sense of where Tanzania is in comparison to where they live.

The second half of the book takes a marked shift in feeling as the family stops in the small town of Bagamoyo. Bagamoyo used to be home to a slave-trading post and is now the home to a museum of that horrible time in our history. Robinson uses the second portion of the book to very briefly tell the history of slaver to a group of kids that don’t even understand the term slave. Since the slave trade directly impacted Robinson’s family, it is an important part of their personal history to understand although it does take a very upbeat book to a different place.

I think one of the most interesting things was the fact that this story was based on Robinson’s family and a real trip that they took. She deftly portrays the difficulty of having family spread out between two different continents and gives us all an interesting perspective on African-American history as seen through the eyes of children who have only lived in Africa.

I received this book from Scholastic Books as a part of the 2017 Multicultural Children’s Book Day.

I have been involved with Multicultural Children’s Book Day since it started. Having grown up in Los Angeles, surrounded by a diverse community, I never thought about the notion of being different. Now that I live in a small town in the south, I am much more aware just how hard it can be to be a minority and to be misunderstood. I have always tried to teach my daughters to love everyone and to believe that we are all one human race and that all of our histories and differences should be celebrated. I also know how important it is to be able to see yourself in the books you read, even more so when you are in the minority, so I look forward to this blogging event every year.

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2017 (1/27/17) is in its fourth year and was founded by Valarie Budayr from Jump Into A Book and Mia Wenjen from PragmaticMom. Our mission is to raise awareness of the ongoing need to include kids’ books that celebrate diversity in home and school bookshelves while also working diligently to get more of these types of books into the hands of young readers, parents and educators.

Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day holiday, the MCBD Team is on a mission to change all of that.

We’d like to also give a shout-out to MCBD’s impressive CoHost Team who not only hosts the book review link-up on celebration day, but who also works tirelessly to spread the word of this event. View our CoHosts HERE.

What a beautiful and important book! I must get a copy! Our niece has just completed a school with a STEM program for 1,500 girls in Kitenga, Tanzania — the Girls Education Collaboration. The first 75 have just started. She will love this book!